I've been trying to get through this for months... years actually. I first became familiar with it from an article in the LA Times (in 2000?) and thouI've been trying to get through this for months... years actually. I first became familiar with it from an article in the LA Times (in 2000?) and thought it sounded interesting. I was curious to find out how an intelligent and progressive-minded person would end up defining herself as "a Christian." So I started reading it back then... I'm not even sure how far I got or how much I had to re-read once I picked it up again several months ago.

The writing is honest and easy, and her stories are compelling and thoughtful... but I still don't understand how she came to this identification. The only thing I can figure that cemented it for her is maybe her re-hab or involvement with AA or similar groups that promote a redemptive / Christian narrative. That, and it seems as though she found a great community in her small church.

A guilty pleasure... I took a notion to get this book a couple of weeks ago (despite its hype) and walked into our little neighborhood bookstore and nA guilty pleasure... I took a notion to get this book a couple of weeks ago (despite its hype) and walked into our little neighborhood bookstore and nearly whispered the title to the clerk because I couldn't find it there on my own.

Thing is, I really enjoyed it as I knew I would (though I didn't want anyone to know I knew). And then... LOL when I read Gilbert's own embarrassment in a bookstore when she was buying awful titles to help with her depression... I just wanted to send her an email and say, "I know how you feel, sister." ...more

Frank and I were having a conversation the other night in which we were discussing one of our usual topics: religion / spirituality... though I guessFrank and I were having a conversation the other night in which we were discussing one of our usual topics: religion / spirituality... though I guess the other favorites (art, film, food, books, money woes, professional woes, traffic rants, geography, bad weather, family woes, music, soccer, our friends and our beloved cats) were probably discussed as well... But we were both expressing our mistrust of inexperience, and how we'd never want to take "wisdom" from someone who hadn't lived a bit. Specifically, Frank was talking about years of Catholic schooling as a contrast to the gay-friendly Episcopal community we've been spending more time with of late. Anyway, he said, "As long as you have a clergy that doesn't have sex, they'll give you narratives of sexual repression."

I guess what he said is an obvious point, but it really resonated with where I am right now in my thinking and belief and also with the rereading of this book, Siddhartha. I'm pretty much a novelty seeker by nature so I don't tend to run away from experience... but more toward it. And I've often had a difficult time respecting those who shut down from experience only to tell others how to live (when they themselves are not open to life and bodies, the particular beauty or ugliness of a place or person or food... and all that other messy stuff of existence). When it comes down to it, I believe that wisdom and even holiness come through experience and not detachment, which is what I glean from this book as well. I like the below quote very much; it comes near the end of the book.

When the illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real… And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

Also, I'm changing my rating of this book from 4 stars to 5 as I was quite young the first time I read it (18 years ago). ...more

The amount of historical content isn't significant, but enough for someone like me who knows so little about these things. I was especially intriguedThe amount of historical content isn't significant, but enough for someone like me who knows so little about these things. I was especially intrigued by the Celtic influences on the church, how early they were and the fact that they had female priests as early as the 7th century.

I'm getting quite a lot of information from this slim little book. I'm also learning some things about myself:

1. that I have never really understood Christianity, but have only somewhat understood Protestantism... which is not saying the same thing and not saying much (to my discredit)

2. most ideological problems I've had with Christianity were specifically with mainstream Protestantism... namely the emphasis on 'salvation' (which has never concerned me), literal readings of the Bible, the reinvent-the-wheel style over-democractization (which isn't really democratic), apocalyptic visions of a new heaven and earth rather than reformed visions, the right-wing politics and the anti-intellectualism

3. that I have a sincere interest in worship and mystery, which I wasn't aware were part of the Christian tradition (honestly)

Now, mind you, these things about myself are what I've thought about from reading the book... NOT what the writer has written about Christianity. I'm just pleased that such a seemingly straight-forward, information style book could prompt these thoughts.

Here's what I said previously, when I read the first half a couple of nights ago:

It's an easy read and full of information for people like me who have no grounding in traditional progressive (sounds contradictory, but not really) Christianity. I'm also finding that it's in conversation with those ideas I'd focused on in Siddhartha... namely going through experience and through the body.

In reference to the sacraments and the ceremonial movement of the body through the space, Webber wrote two things I found particularly interesting:

Human beings have misused created things so often that some forms of religion, even some forms of Christianity, are inclined to distrust and reject created things as inherently evil. (p.34)

Two people in love can sit at opposite ends of a couch and gaze soulfully into each other's eyes, but sooner or later most people will find it helpful to get closer and to use their bodies to say what their words can never fully express. "Platonic relationships" are inadequate.(p.35)...more

This book came to mind recently (due to professional and spiritual possibilities that I won't go into here... but had something to do with me and FranThis book came to mind recently (due to professional and spiritual possibilities that I won't go into here... but had something to do with me and Frank moving to Istanbul for 2 years, which then turned into a move to the Boston area instead). Point being... I'd forgotten how significant this work had been for me. Bowles has this capacity to capture the essence of an experience... that moment of transcendence that comes from giving up all we know that constitutes our sense of self. Who are we when we have nothing with which to identity? I find the book quite remarkable and life-affirming in that way.

"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless..." ...more

"Theology is – or should be – a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense." Karen Armstrong

I read The"Theology is – or should be – a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense." Karen Armstrong

I read The Spiral Staircase a few weeks back between road trips, first to visit an aunt and uncle in a small university community and second to attend an Episcopal peace conference at a mountaintop retreat / convent. The timing of my read of this memoir (about a nun who left the church to pursue graduate work at Oxford only to leave academia and make her way as an agnostic writing about religion) between these two trips was significant in molding my opinion of the book as were the circumstances and motivations that got it into my hands in the first place.

During the visit with our aunt and uncle, Frank and I shared that we'd joined a radically inclusive and diverse inner-city Episcopal Church, and what a remarkable experience it had been for us. The aunt and uncle (who'd always been so unwaveringly supportive of us through our educational and artistic success and struggles... what with graduate schools, relocations, under-employment and penury) were not pleased. In fact, they were quite appalled that we had joined what they considered a "blood cult" and that we had done something that seemed "so out of character for both of you." Nonetheless, they consoled themselves by saying that it was probably "just a phase" and we would get through it one way or another. (Neither aunt nor uncle were much for religion, especially Christianity.)

And then our aunt told me I should read one of Karen Armstrong's books because it recorded how she had gone through a similar religious phase, even to the point of becoming a nun at 17, but eventually "cured" herself of the debilitating religious condition. Though somehow I'd missed even knowing who Armstrong was, I was excited to be exposed to her books... not in small part due to my fascination with monastic life... Christian or Buddhist or whatever variety... and also that this fascination had been much of the motivation behind signing up for the peace conference at the convent. I really wanted to get even a tiny glimpse into how different monastic communities lived. I had so many mundane and practical questions, not to mention the scholarly and spiritual ones. Anyway, the aunt had a copy of the book, so I dove right into reading it while we were still on our visit.

So... while the familial words were harsh and the expressions disappointing, I was grateful for the book and remarkably un-offended, mostly because I know where the aunt and uncle are coming from. I've been there and felt that baffled confusion as I tried to make sense of other people's religious belief. But eventually not unlike Karen Armstrong (though her life experiences were superficially different than my own, what we'd experienced on a structural level was remarkably similar), I too had come to realize that faith is not about belief, but about practice. "Belief" is really more of a fundamentalist and literalist concern. Spiritual practice is something else quite entirely, and while some practices are solitary and others have the support of a religious community, practice is essentially about ritual, repetition, movements of the body, states of the mind and compassionate action.

As Armstrong says, "Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific, or historical reality but because they are life enhancing."

Anyway, I found the book to be a compelling read not just for the scholarly and spiritual content, but for the story itself. I particularly enjoyed reading about her stay with an academic couple from Oxford while caring for the couple's autistic son. The glimpses into the functioning of that household and the life of this child were quite strange and beautiful.

And though Armstrong didn't answer most of my curiosity about monastic life, she did afford glimpses into other ways of living and, surprisingly, mirror my own evolving spirituality. And at this point, I would have to disagree with our aunt who said Armstrong was somehow "cured" from religion. Seemed to me that Armstrong only became more conscious and thoughtful about religious practice. ...more